Changes

|access date= 09.03.2012

|access date= 09.03.2012

|quote= ESA: We seem to agree that the Big Bang started with an 'inflation', a short period of high-speed expansion. But what happened before that?

|quote= ESA: We seem to agree that the Big Bang started with an 'inflation', a short period of high-speed expansion. But what happened before that?

Joseph Silk: Maybe long before inflation there was a Universe that was collapsing near a singularity, which then inflated again, so there was already a history before the Big Bang. Some people think there was a 'pre-Big Bang'. One possibility is that this pre-Big Bang, if there was such a place, would have made lots of entropy (the amount of disorder in the Universe). And the Universe we live in does have huge amounts of entropy. That's one theory. But we have no understanding of how to change from collapsing to expanding. There's no physical way to explain that transition. Some people believe that they have explanations the pre-Big Bang, so it's a respectable theory.}}</ref> (cf. Dr.Stenger: "In the scenario I presented, our universe is described as having "tunneled" through the chaos ...from prior universe that existed for all previous time")<ref name="WhomadeGod"/>, or put heir hope to [[quantum mechanics]]<ref name="PhysLink"/>. Some resort to the assertion that the world was uncaused (cf. Carl Sagan: "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be")<ref name="skeptics"/> while other dismiss the question of the first cause altogether (cf. Hawking: "To ask what happened before the universe began is like asking for a point on the Earth at 91 degrees north latitude. Instead of talking about the universe being created, and maybe coming to and end, one should just say: the universe is.")<ref name="DeniableDarwin"/>.      

Joseph Silk: Maybe long before inflation there was a Universe that was collapsing near a singularity, which then inflated again, so there was already a history before the Big Bang. Some people think there was a 'pre-Big Bang'. One possibility is that this pre-Big Bang, if there was such a place, would have made lots of entropy (the amount of disorder in the Universe). And the Universe we live in does have huge amounts of entropy. That's one theory. But we have no understanding of how to change from collapsing to expanding. There's no physical way to explain that transition. Some people believe that they have explanations the pre-Big Bang, so it's a respectable theory.}}</ref> (cf. Dr.Stenger: "In the scenario I presented, our universe is described as having "tunneled" through the chaos ...from prior universe that existed for all previous time")<ref name="WhomadeGod"/>, or put their hope to [[quantum mechanics]]<ref name="PhysLink"/>. Some resort to the assertion that the world was uncaused (cf. Carl Sagan: "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be")<ref name="skeptics"/> while other dismiss the question of the first cause altogether (cf. Hawking: "To ask what happened before the universe began is like asking for a point on the Earth at 91 degrees north latitude. Instead of talking about the universe being created, and maybe coming to and end, one should just say: the universe is.")<ref name="DeniableDarwin"/>.

== Antipathy to the idea of beginning ==

== Antipathy to the idea of beginning ==